


Tales from The Kaiju War

by themocaw



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), World War Z - Max Brooks
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-28
Updated: 2013-10-28
Packaged: 2017-12-30 17:56:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1021663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themocaw/pseuds/themocaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite the fandom tags, the only real references to World War Z in these short stories are that they use the Stud Terkels style oral history interview format. </p><p>A few short interviews with the people who influenced the behind-the-scenes aspects of the Kaiju War.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Engineers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An interview with the people who designed Gipsy Danger.

**Hello. Please state your name and occupation for the record.**

Hey. I'm Drew Watkins.

_And I am Takashi Kinomoto. Drew and I were the technology and design leads for the Mark Three Jaeger project._

_  
_They recruited me from MIT at the age of 19. I'd just done my master's thesis on refinements to the Pons System.

_Tokyo University. Materials Science._

**Tell me a little bit about the Mark Three Jaeger Project.**

What's there to tell? They asked us to improve on the Mark Twos. We did our best. End of story.

**But there was more to it than that, wasn't there? Especially considering the eventual role that a Mark Three Jaeger had in the culmination of the Kaiju War.**

Ah. You want to talk about Gipsy Danger, huh? You want to know if there was something special about her? Something that made her different than the others, some special reason why the Mark Threes succeeded where the Mark Fives didn't?

 

**Well. . .**

Look, I'll be blunt. You won't find one talking to me. Truth be told, nothing we did made the Mark Threes anything special. Sure, Mark Three was where we switched from one-off prototypes to mass production. . . such as it is when it comes to Jaegers, where a "production run" generally consists of five to ten units. But nothing we did with them made them better than any of the other generations of Jaegers. IF you want to talk about why it was Gipsy Danger that blew up the breach for us? Talk to Mori and Beckett. Talk to Choi and Harrisburg. Talk to the members of the refit team. It was their work, not ours, that was responsible for victory.

 

**That's a bit disingenuous, isn't it? I mean, it was your decision to use analog control systems that. . .**

No such thing.

 

**Excuse me?**

No such thing. There's no such thing as an "analog control system." Not when they're computer driven, and every computer that exists in the world. . . that has existed since ENIAC. . . is purely digital.

 

**But. . .**

You've been seeing that movie again, haven't you? The one where they've got that handsome blond actor guy spouting that line about how Gipsy Danger survived "Leatherback's" EMP because the Mark Threes used analog controls? Bullshit. No such thing. But I can tell you how that rumor got started. Is that interesting enough for you to write about?"

 

**Please continue.**

I'll take that as a yes. All right, here's the thing you have to understand. The entire Mark Three project was hugely politicized. When it came to the Mark One and Mark Twos? The science and engineering teams got full control of their projects. Mostly because they were the long shot, and none of the bean counters wanted to screw with the guys who had the fate of the world in their hands. But by the time they got to the Mark Threes? We had the Kaiju under control. We'd proven that we could fight them and win. . . not just win, curb-stomp them. Ever since Brawler Yukon punched "Karloff's" head into the ground, we were winning. Every time Jaegers fought Kaiju, the Kaiju lost hard. Of course, back then, they were all Cat Ones. The first Cat Twos had just started emerging through the breach, and even they got their asses kicked by the Mark Two Jaegers. So by the time the Mark Three project began, the bean counters and politicians came out of the woodwork. And what they saw was dollar signs.

Creating the PPDC Jaeger Fleet was going to be one of the biggest public works projects in human history. Each Jaeger costs as much as a battleship or destroyer. We're talking billions of dollars involved in every single one. And every corporation wanted in on the effort. . . and they had politician and military friends who were willing to toss them some work. 

I'm still not sure how the fuck we actually managed to get our work done. Every day we had another company rep coming in and trying to shoehorn their company's tech into our new designs. Some of them we were able to accomodate. . . some of those corps actually had some good tech that we were happy to have. But a lot of them? More interested in lining their own pockets than in trying to make a better product.

 

**And that's how the misapprehension that the Mark Threes had analog controls got started?**

No, but it's a perfect example of the kind of environment we were working in. Actually, the corporate types weren't the big problems. Most of them actually knew their stuff, even if they wanted to get their fingers into the pie in the process. Our real problem came from the military and the politicians. Not the ones directly involved in the Jaeger project. The ones high up that had no idea what was going on and were still trying to get their own in. 

Tak has this story. . . hey, Tak, tell him about the whole "alloys" thing.

 

_Ah yes. It happened in the middle of the prototype phase for the Mark Threes. As it turns out, the pilots for the first Mark Three Jaeger that was supposed to come out were the sons of a U.S. Senator. . . do you remember his name, Andrew?_

 

James Callahan. Douchebag. His kids were Aaron and Stephanie Callahan. Good pilots, actually. I think they ended up with six kills piloting Blitz Arbalest before they bought it defending Seattle.

 

_Ah, yes. Senator James Callahan. Well, given that his children would be the ones that would be piloting the first of the Mark Threes, he was, of course, interested in seeing what their vehicle would look like. It was a huge media event. He came through to take a look at what was going on, and at one point, we showed him a section of the armor plating. He asked what it was made of. . . and I told him that it was a titanium-based alloy made up of such-and-such percent titanium, such and such percent aluminum, such and such this and that. . . and the Senator threw a fit. "We're spending this much money and you're only using partial titanium? What's your problem? Why don't you use pure titanium?"_

_I tried to explain to him that pure titanium isn't much good except as jewelry: can't take as much heat as alloys. I even tried to tell him that the alloys had better tensile strength than pure titanium. . . he didn't buy it. "Damn it, I don't want you wasting taxpayer money on cheap materials," he shouted at me. "If my kids are going to be riding that thing: no alloys. Or you don't get your money."_

_Idiocy. He had no idea what he was talking about. But he was friends with the head of the Senate subcommittee that was one of the funding sources of the Mark Three project . . ._

**What did you do?**

_We went on using the normal alloy compositions. And we put in a standing order that if Senator Callahan ever asked about the composition of any material component of a Jaeger ever again, the only answer we would give is "Pure X. No Alloys." He never caught on._

_  
_It actually kind of became a running joke among Jaeger pilots and mechanics. Whenever you ran into a material that would take too long to describe, you'd use that as a shorthand: "Pure Iron, no alloys." It became our code phrase for, "We could tell you what it's made out of, but it would take too long to explain and you wouldn't care anyway."

_(Laughter) Ironically, it got me into trouble. I nearly got called to the floor because someone overheard the joke and demanded to know why we were using tons of 24 karat gold in the circuitry of the Jaegers. . ._

So yeah, something similar happened with the whole "Analog Controls" thing. One of the members of the Russian leadership used to serve on a Cold War era destroyer during his younger years. The thing about those old Soviet ships is that their fire control computer was mechanical, not electronic. It was basically this big glorified slide rule where you'd dial in the numbers, turn the crank, and get your answer that way. . . thing is, it was completely inferior to American electronic fire control computers. But Ivan couldn't admit that they were inferior at anything. . . so the rationale they'd tell people would be that the mechanical analog computers could work after EMPs, whereas electronic computers couldn't. 

So here comes this old Russian guy who vaguely remembers something about analog computers from his younger years, hears something about the Jaegers using computerized control schemes, and immediately demands that we install analog computers as backup in case of electromagnetic pulse. "These machines work near nuclear explosions," was his logic, "and I do not want them to shut down due to the EMPs.

Absolutely stupid. Standard protocol was not to nuke until after the Jaegers were outside the EMP range. And even then, if you hit a Jaeger with an EMP, the worst that happens is that it shuts down and maybe falls over! The ones that really needed EMP shielded controls were the helicopters. . . lose power in one of those and you're in bigger trouble. And the real truth was, if nukes were going off anywhere near a Jaeger, it's because things had gone so badly that the pilots, and probably the Jaeger itself, were dead.

I couldn't bypass this guy the same way Tak bulshitted Senator Callahan, either, because Sergei. . . that was his name, General Sergei Antonov. . . had added EMP resistance testing to the design parameters. So I didn't have a choice but to reinforce the entire computer system and control leads to resist Electromagnetic Pulse. Absolutely stupid, I thought. Completely pointless, I thought. Stupid waste of money, I thought. Why the hell do you need to be EMP shielded when the Kaiju are dumb animals that don't have nukes. (Laughter).

 

**So in the end. . . EMP shielding the Mark Threes turned out to be a good idea after all?**

Hell no. It diverted money and energy away from shit that could have made a real difference in combat. It added weight that could have been devoted to better armor or control systems. It was a complete waste of time and energy.

 

**But the Battle of Hong Kong proved that. . .**

The Battle of Hong Kong proved nothing except that you can't predict anything. All it proves is that in the end, blind luck beats smarts every time.

_What Andrew is trying to say is that EMP Shielding the Mark Threes upped their cost by 25% and provided no real benefit in combat except in one corner case. . . one out of hundreds of battles fought. That is why later generation Jaegers removed the requirement for EMP shielding. The truth of the matter is that in the one case of the Battle of Hong Kong, the fact that Gipsy Danger was EMP-shielded was a key turning point in the battle. But in many other previous engagements, the added cost of the EMP shielding meant that fewer Jaegers could be fielded._

_  
_Exactly. While we're on the subject of Gipsy Danger. Remember how she got fucked up fighting Knifehead? She shouldn't have been taking on a Cat Three that size alone. Standard doctrine was to take on Cat Threes using two-Jaeger teams. Preferably three, like they did in Manila: Lucky Seven, Gipsy Danger, and Shaolin Rogue in a three-Jaeger formation. Do you know why Gipsy went in alone? Because Anchorage Shatterdome's third Jaeger was down for repairs, and Romeo Blue was off running long range patrols. Our original plan was to have five Jaegers at each Shatterdome. . . we had three. Long story short, Gipsy has to take on Knifehead alone. . . does a damn good job too, those pilots had a lot of heart. . . and even still, she still gets fucked up and we lost one of the best young pilots of Gen Three.

That's why it pisses me off every time some smarmy bastard tries to lecture me on how I was wrong the entire time about the EMP shielding on the Mark Threes. Because there's no way that the entire Pan Pacific Jaeger fleet should have been down to four officially decomissioned units based out of Hong Kong. That happened because funding got cut. Funding got cut because the council thought that the Jaeger Program was ineffective. The Jaeger program was getting ineffective because the Jaegers were losing fights, because they didn't have sufficient backup and replacements. And we didn't have enough Jaegers. . . because they were too expensive. And a lot of that cost came from the EMP shields.

We should have lost. We should be dead. The only reason we aren't has nothing to do with me. So if you want to talk about the real story behind Gipsy Danger? Talk to the Hong Kong Shatterdome people, like I said. Talk to Mori and Beckett. Because they're the ones who managed to turn shit into gold.

They're the reasons why we're still alive.


	2. Idol

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A look at a couple of the more intriguing side characters from the Pacific Rim Universe.

It was probably one of my weirder requests. I'd done publicity for lots of Korean idols in the past. . . boy bands. Girl bands. Singers, both pop and indie. I started off my career as a personal assistant for the PR managers of bands like B2st and 2AM. But this was my first time being asked to do publicity for a pair of Jaeger pilots.

The thing that you have to understand about that period of time was that we thought that the Kaiju threat was under controlled. True, there were deaths. True, there were casualties. But the big disasters, the ones like San Francisco and Manila, they were years in the past. For us, Kaiju attacks became like the threat of earthquakes or volcanos used to be. . . or the threat of tornados or hurricanes. They were natural disasters, but they were disasters that could be combated, prepared for, and defeated.

More than that, however, they were incredible chances to become rich. I am not talking about the black market that sprang up around the purchase and sale of Kaiju body parts. I am talking about the entertainment value of the Jaeger battles themselves. That incredible footage of Romeo Blue defeating Hardship in the evacuated city of Seattle recieved more hits on the internet than any viral video before then. And then there was the Nike Corporation's public relations coup in recieving permission from the Pan Pacific Defense Corps to market "Romeo Blue vs. Hardship" sneakers.

We who were in the Kaiju business assuaged any guilt we might have felt in profiting off of the courage and sacrifices of these remarkable pilots by donating a portion of the proceeds that we recieved to the PPDC's "Fallen Ranger" charity for the family of those Rangers who died in combat. And certainly, we did much good: enough so that the Pan Pacific Defense Corps could take out million-dollar life insurance policies on every single one of their Rangers. Not to mention the money made by the Rangers themselves with personal endorsement deals. . . 

But I apologize. I am getting off topic. We were discussing the Nova Hyperion pair.

**It's perfectly all right. Please proceed on your own time.**

Mmmm. In publicity terms, they were about as good as one could hope for. They were both young and female, athletic and attractive. They had already made a name for themselves in the field of Olympic fencing, after all. They were both saber fencers. I hope you understand the importance of that fact.

**Not particularly, no. Please explain?**

Mmmmm. Well, you see, there are three weapons that are used in Olympic fencing competition. The most well known is foil: points are scored only with the point of the weapon, against the opponent's torso. The small target area and precise nature of the weapon means that matches are most often won through skill and deception. In order to score a touch, the fencer must outsmart and outthink their opponent. 

The next weapon is the epee. Epee fencing is similar to foil, except that the target area is now the entire body. Because of this, points can be scored against the toe, helmet, or glove. Epee fencing is often very athletic: because the fencer must defend their entire body against attack, and because the weapon requires a touch from the point to score, fighters tend to do a lot of jumping and skipping about to avoid incoming attacks.

Saber, however, is the only weapon that allows the edge of the blade to score touches as well as the point. Because of that, the attacker has many more options than the defender. In addition, the entire upper body is considered a target area. Saber matches, therefore, are characterized by aggression and speed. In many cases, a round will last no longer than it takes for both combatants to advance within weapon range and make a couple of attacks. Saber fencing requires speed, aggression, and both a quick eye and a quick hand. It is, in fact, such a fast fencing style that it is the only one of the three weapons that forbids the fencer from crossing their back foot in front of their front foot on the advance, in order to slow down the rate at which the two combatants can fight.

So-Yi and Yuna. . . 

 

**Apologies, Mister Kim. Could you please clarify, for the record, who you mean by those two names?**

Ah. Yes. Pang So-Yi and Ahn Yuna. The pilots of Nova Hyperion, South Korea's first and only Jaeger.

**Thank you. Please continue.**

As I was saying, So-Yi and Yuna had actually gained some infamy the year before the attack on Busan, at the high school-level National competition, after a particularly lengthy Saber fencing match in which both combatants made over fifty passes without scoring a touch on each other. Neither one was able to touch the other without themselves being hit in return. That was the incident that brought them to the attention of the PPDC. That level of understanding, that ability to predict the other's attacks and counters, was a strong indication of possible Drift Compatibility.

They came into the public conciousness after the attack on Busan, of course. That photograph of Yuna carrying her arch-rival out of the ruins of the Busan Sports Complex, with their faces bloodied and their white uniforms stained with blood and dust. . . a perfect illustration of how Korea felt in the aftermath of our first Kaiju attack.

You must realize that no one in South Korea truly felt the threat of the Kaiju, not like the Japanese or Chinese. All Kaiju attacks in the past had to pass through Japan in order to reach us. We hadn't seen the devastation a Kaiju could inflict first-hand, not on a Korean city. To us, the Kaiju war meant jobs, especially in the technology industry, and news footage of terrible death and loss happening in other countries. Up until that Category Three made landfall in Busan, that is.

Of course, we had to have our own Jaeger. Of course, we needed our own heroes. Korea is a small nation, but it has maintained its independence, despite the efforts of the Japanese and Chinese, for centuries, and we have done this through determination and a strong national spirit. We needed heroes. And it became my job to turn those two young girls into the heroes that our nation needed.

**How did that go?**

Not easy at all. (Laughter). Americans like to think of Asian women as being shy and submissive. They have no idea. Of course they play at being cute and girlish. Of course, they giggle and talk in high voices. . . but they can be so incredibly willful. 

So-Yi was the easy one. She had the girlish face and the looks of a Korean pop idol. She was willing to smile and giggle and laugh at the jokes of the hosts on the evening talk shows. Yuna, on the other hand, was a handful. I knew my job would be difficult the moment the PPDC announced that she and So-Yi had been chosen as the pilots for Nova Hyperion. There they were, walking onto the stage: So-Yi with her cute pageboy cut and her open, excited smile. . . and there was Yuna, with her head freshly shaved, like some nun! And wearing a white bandanna with a _taeguk_ on it and the words "COURAGE" and "DETERMINATION" hand-written on either side in black ink!  _Aaah!_ Such frustration! And it was then that I got the phone call from their PPDC handlers, begging me to help. . . 

 

**Was it important that the two of them had a good public image?**

Very. People often criticize the Jaeger pilots of this era for seeming more like movie stars than warriors. They forget that the Jaeger program was always underfunded. The PPDC was much more interested in walls and stationary gun emplacements rather than giant, expensive robots that required billions of dollars in resources to run. The Gage Twins might have acted like celebrities, but the money from their endorsements, from their personal charisma, allowed the Jaeger program to focus on fighting the war, rather than caring for the families of their employees.

It was especially important in South Korea, where celebrity culture is so intense. Our public enjoys reading about the minute details of the lives of their stars, and maintaining a good public persona 24-7 can be very important in the life of a young star. I could tell you stories about trying to salvage the careers of pop singers or movie stars after they got caught doing something that went against their image. . . and here we had a young girl who showed up at her press conference looking like a gangster! Of course they called in a PR expert to revamp their image!

**And did you?**

I didn't need to! (Laughter). The truth is, I had one meeting with the girls, and realized that anything I could do would just hurt, not help! They already had all the personal magnetism they needed to become stars in the eyes of our people. Seeing them together was like seeing childhood friends. So-Yi was the one who would mug for the camera. She would talk to the hosts on the evening talk shows. She would be the one that would smile and laugh and make the "v" sign and say cheerful things thanking everyone at home for supporting her. She was the darling of the nation.

But Yuna was something different. If So-Yi represented the female idol, Yuna was an embodiment of Korea's determination and fighting spirit. That shaved head that had made me cringe so much. . . she wore it proudly, like a true daughter of  _Taehan Minguk_. She would appear on television with those dark, cool eyes, and she would stare down the camera as if she were daring it to try something. She became a sensation. Young men and women shaving their heads, emulating her look. Stenciled images of her face in black and white appearing in back alleys, with the words "BRING IT ON" spray painted underneath in red.

Of course, it would be a mistake to think of So-Yi as the nice one and Yuna as the warrior, as that crazed stalker discovered, to his detriment, when he tried to burst into their locker room at that event. The images of him being carried away, with his face covered in blood, became iconic, but people often forget that it was So-Yi, not Yuna, who hit him in the face with that chair.

Korea loved them: their warrior daughters, the young women who would defend their country's honor. . . which is why, they tried so hard to have them replaced.

**After the Gipsy Danger incident?**

Not just that. Romeo Blue. Horizon Brave. Especially Shaolin Rogue. . . the footage of those pilots slowly dying inside their conn-pod, trapped inside while the fires got closer and no one was able to come save them. . . we all imagined the beautiful faces of So-Yi and Yuna in their places. . . and many of us couldn't bear the thought. There was a campaign to have them replaced with the Park twins: those Korean Air Force pilots that came in second place. It didn't go far. Not after the two of them appeared on camera and begged for the chance to fight to protect their nation. How could we say no, after those stirring words?

I still remember the first time they deployed in Nova Hyperion. The entire country was tuned in to watch the battle off the coast of Siberia. They were supposed to be the second line of defense: if all went well, they were not supposed to fight, but then Dokkebi bypassed Eden Assassin and Cherno Alpha, and they were the only ones in position to intercept. . . 

I think I have the video of that fight here. . . I'll look for it later. It would be good to add to your archives. But the part that I love the best comes at twelve minutes and thirty-four seconds. I've memorized that timestamp: it's the moment when Nova Hyperion, with her missile and gun batteries spent, and facing that three thousand ton beast charging straight towards her, drops her auxiliary missile pods and deploys her blades.

[Laughter] I still laugh to think of that sight. . . this huge, fifty meter tall mechanical war machine marching into battle carrying swords! So-Yi and Yuna insisted on them. . . and they didn't want sting-blades or saws, no. They were saber fencers. They wanted proper swords, and they got them. 

Of course, what everyone forgets is that the swords actually didn't do all that much. . . Dokkebi was already wounded badly, and its charge was a desperation attack, the last actions of a dying beast. But seeing its head come off under those two swords. . . it did something to everyone watching. It gave them hope. And it reignited the passion, the determination, that we children of the Land of the Morning Calm had lost when that thing came ashore in Busan. . . 

. . . incidentally, the t-shirt with the image of Nova Hyperion standing over the fallen Kaiju with its swords stained blue, like some mighty warrior over a vanquished soul? Sold over ten million units that first month.

**You seem proud of that fact.**

I am. Very proud. Does that make me greedy? A mercenary? Perhaps. But the money that we raised through the sales of that t-shirt did a lot of good. It meant that Yuna and So-Yi could move their families to the American heartland, far from the Pacific Rim. It meant that they could fight on without worrying about what was happening to their loved ones in Korea.

I wish I could tell you that it all ended happily ever after. Unfortunately, I can't. Despite that victory, we were already on the losing half of the war. Nova Hyperion fought well, and although it did not personally score any more kills, it provided backup to Cherno Alpha and Eden Assassin on multiple occasions. Sadly, it was destroyed towards the end of the war. . . thankfully, Yuna and So-Yi survived, due to Cherno Alpha's quick intervention. They requested to be brought in as replacement pilots for the Mark Three Restoration project, but Marshal Pentecost had a different idea in mind.

 

**Raleigh Beckett.**

Yes. The American hero of the Kaiju War. It upset them so badly not to participate in the final push on the Breach.

(Smiles). On the other hand, they did participate in some small way. You see, part of the reason why they'd wanted so much to be part of the Mark Three project was the person leading it up: a young woman named Mako Mori, who had led the design team that built Nova Hyperion's Progressive Swords. . . and she'd perfected her design. They needed steel for Gipsy Danger's chain swords, and Nova Hyperion was being sold for scrap. . . 

I suppose it's a bit silly, but part of me is still proud that it was good, Korean steel that helped cut those Kaiju in half on the last day of the Kaiju War. I know the girls are proud of that fact as well.


End file.
